Gaggia Classic Pro

For most of the last decade the Gaggia Classic Pro was the default answer to "what should my first real espresso machine be" - but the RI9380/46 is no longer the machine you buy new. Gaggia's own Classic Pro product page now serves the Classic Pro E24 and calls that the newest version, and the 2023 Classic Evo Pro that sat between the two has been folded into the same successor. What earned this platform a decade of devotion was never its feature list: a stainless shell you can stand on, a commercial 58mm group and portafilter that shares baskets, screens and tampers with machines costing five times as much, a three-way solenoid that leaves a dry puck, and internals simple enough that every wearing part is a cheap order and a screwdriver away.

The long-running consensus among owners is that the Classic Pro is a very good machine wearing a mediocre machine's clothes. Stock, it runs hot and cold - bimetal thermostats swing roughly ten degrees either side of target, the boiler is small enough that a double shot swaps out a serious fraction of its volume, and machines from the pre-9-bar era left the factory around 12 to 15 bar. So owners learn to temperature surf (flush until the brew light drops, wait for it to click back on, pull) and work through a familiar list: a 9-bar OPV spring for a few dollars, an IMS basket and shower screen because the stock baskets have holes that are visibly half-punched under magnification, a single-hole steam tip, a lower drip tray. That list is exactly what made this machine controversial - long threads argue it is bad beginner advice because a $450 machine becomes a $700 project - and just as many long-time owners push back that they temp-surf, run stock and pull shots better than their local cafe. Both camps agree on the durability: 2002, 2004 and 2006 machines still pulling daily shots, $30 thrift-store finds brought back to life, and units handed down to kids heading off to college.

This is now a secondhand and remaining-stock machine, and it should be shopped that way. New leftover stock at $450 buys the older aluminium boiler, a one-year warranty and possibly the high-pressure OPV, while $549 buys the current Classic Pro E24 with a larger lead-free brass boiler, stronger steam, factory 9-bar pressure and two years of cover - so if you are buying new, buy the E24 and treat the Evo Pro and the original Classic Pro as the same lineage that led to it. Where the old Classic still makes complete sense is used: heavily modded examples with a PID, new solenoid, springs and a bottomless portafilter already fitted turn up regularly for a fraction of retail, and the mod ecosystem, Gaggimate and Gaggiuino controllers included, fits the older bodies as happily as the new one. Against a $300 Breville Bambino it is the slower, heavier, more repairable choice that handles lighter roasts better, and against a $1,200 Profitec GO it is the one you buy knowing you will finish the engineering yourself.